Equal Parts Nostalgia and Obsession

In case anyone was curious about the delay since the last post, it wasn’t due to a crazy gazpacho-fueled lost-weekend bender. The unfortunately long gap is thanks to issues with the digital camera, which have now been resolved, so I should be back on track. That said, I’m taking next week off for an out-of-town event, and Sunday baking will be on hold until the following weekend.

But I’m here now, so let’s explain this violently red-and-white concoction, shall we?

I’ve mentioned before that I cannot pass up sour cherries when they show up for approximately three nanoseconds this time of year, no matter how insane the price. You don’t even want to know how loudly I squealed “Cherries!” when I saw one solitary quart at the mid-week farmers market, nor how much I paid for said quart, nor the elaborate protective structure I rigged up to get it home on the commuter train without squishing a single priceless cherry. Suffice it to say I put it in enough effort to give me every incentive to come up with a really special application for them.

I originally thought about making a pie, but since it’s also a bazillion degrees of late (see previous gazpacho post), I really didn’t want to use the oven if I didn’t have to. Then I opened the fridge and saw I had an open half-gallon of milk to use up and a good amount of basmati rice left over from dinner earlier in the week, and remembered that I’ve been meaning for a while to do a simple rice pudding in tribute to my grandmother. From there it was a short mental leap to the idea of layering the pudding in glasses with a sour cherry compote.

I’m fairly sure I’ve noted that Grandma was not a baker and she only had a handful of recipes in her repertoire. That’s not to say she didn’t have a sweet tooth. She loved desserts, and was the biggest ice cream fiend you’ve ever seen. Coming from a city with a bakery on practically every corner, though, she was used to buying desserts instead of making them, so the only ones I ever remember her making during her annual visits were fruit salads in the summer, and rice pudding in the winter. She never got sick of either, nor did I.

Grandma did not use leftover rice for her pudding, but that was probably only because she didn’t make a big batch of rice at least once a week the way we do. Anyway, what made her rice pudding hers wasn’t the rice, but the generous splash of heavy cream that got stirred in after the rice and milk and sugar had reduced down. Grandma was a huge fan of butterfat way before it got trendy, and saw absolutely nothing wrong with gilding the lily. The half-cup I use here is in fact a dialing-down of her approach, which would have been to pour in the whole pint container’s worth. You can leave out the cream in the recipe below if you like, and you’d still have a perfectly servicable pudding, but it wouldn’t be Grandma’s.

Grandma never served her rice pudding with a fruit compote that I can recall, but she did love cherries, especially cherries mixed with booze, so I think she’d approve of this addition too. If she’d made this, she probably would have given us grandkids the job of pitting the cherries. I’m not going to sugar-coat the fact that it’s a pain in the ass to pit all these cherries, and splatter is inevitable so your counter and whatever top you’re wearing are going to end up looking like a crime scene. I think it’s worth it, though, especially if you can pull up a favorite relative and have a nice chat while you’re making the mess.

Even without the cherries, this rice pudding is a fantastic blank canvas for experimenting with flavors. You can use coconut milk and tangerine peel for a more Asian twist or a cinnamon stick and a bit of brown sugar for a more Mexican feel. You can serve it with anything from ripe mangoes to stewed apples, and you can even sprinkle with sugar and pull out the torch for a crispy bruleed-sugar top.

One of my favorite things to do is flavor with orange zest and stir in some softly-whipped meringue after it cools to room temperature, which sounds bizarre but gives you a cloud-light, glamorous dessert that’s about ten steps above ordinary pudding.  The only thing I personally don’t hold with at all is raisins, but if that’s your thing, you do what you have to do.

Rice Pudding with Sour Cherry Compote
(Compote adapted from Sally Schneider’s A New Way to Cook)
Serves 4-6

For the rice pudding:
4 cups cooked rice
6 cups milk
2/3 cup granulated sugar
Half a vanilla bean, split
1/2 cup heavy cream

For the sour cherry compote:
1 quart sour cherries, pitted
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup amaretto

In a large saucepan, combine the rice, milk, sugar and vanilla bean and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer uncovered until the milk has reduced and thickened and the rice has softened to your liking, approximately half an hour. Remove from the heat, pull out the vanilla bean, and stir in the cream. Let cool while preparing the compote.

Place the cherries, sugar and amaretto in a medium pan. Cook over medium heat until the cherries have softened and released their juice, 5 minutes or so. Continue cooking until the liquid is syrupy, 5-10 more minutes. Cool to room temperature.

To serve, layer the rice pudding and cherry compote in alternating layers in small glasses. If desired, whip additional cream and offer it on the side.

Notes:

How tender the rice pudding is will depend on which rice you use. Basmati rice is never going to get completely soft, while a medium-grain rice will break down much more and go really creamy. You can also use cracked rice for an even softer texture. My favorite rice for pudding is probably jasmine, which splits the difference and also adds a little bit of fragrance, but use whatever you have and like.

Temperature also makes a difference. If you serve the pudding straight from the fridge, the starches in the rice will have seized up from the cold and made the grains harder, so I think it’s best to reheat to at least room temperature before serving.

If you don’t want to use amaretto in the cherries, you can just use the same amount of water instead. Cherries do really like almonds, though, and I think that tiny hint of nuttiness really adds something to the end product. Either way, don’t discard any of the liquid left over after you’ve scooped the cherries onto the pudding.  This screaming red, intensely cherry syrup makes a fabulous soda when mixed with a fizzy water, and you can also use it to cherry-ize your cola.

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Similar, but not the Same

This Sunday baking entry is not exactly unexplored territory, since I’ve already used the same base to make a mocha-flavored cookie — appropriately enough during the last round of being stuck indoors thanks to my winter curse.

Still, I wanted to share it given that my current crop of co-workers dubbed these “the best you’ve made yet”, and because, while the basic inspiration might be the same, they’re actually quite different. The other one is more snappy, with a very strong mocha flavor, while this one is a proper crumbly shortbread, dominated by butter and just kissed with coffee and chocolate. It’s an interesting example of how you can manipulate the underlying mechanics to get distinct, but equally good, results.

These cookies are also a good lesson on how one ingredient can make a huge difference in the outcome. I had my usual rush of impulsiveness during our last visit to the Asian market, and among the items I picked up was a box of rice flour.

Being gluten-free, rice flour gives baked goods a velvet tenderness that you could never get otherwise, no matter how gently you treat the dough and how carefully you avoid over-mixing.

While leaving the shortbread plain lets you focus like a laser beam on the perfection of its texture, I couldn’t resist adding a chopped-up Scharffen Berger Mocha bar, picked up during my annual crazed shopping spree at the San Francisco Ferry Terminal market. The slightly bitter edge of the coffee, coupled with the buttery plushness of the shortbread, makes for a very not-for-kids cookie.

If you don’t have easy access to the full Scharffen Berger line (as I stupidly don’t, despite being in driving distance of the corporate candy overlords that bought them out) you could use any kind of good-quality dark chocolate bar, flavored or not. I suspect an orange-flavored one would work particularly well.

Mocha Chip Shortbread
(Adapted from Ethereal Brown Sugar Butter Cookies in Sally Schneider’s The Improvisational Cook)
Makes 48 1 x 2 inch fingers

1 cup (2 sticks) cold top-quality unsalted butter
1/3 cup packed light brown sugar
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
6 tablespoons rice flour
1 3-ounce Scharffen Berger mocha bar, chopped

Line a quarter sheet pan with aluminum foil.

Dice the butter into the bowl of a standing mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Add the brown and granulated sugars and the salt, and beat on medium until light and fluffy. Beat in the vanilla.

Whisk together the flours and add to the creamed butter. Mix on medium-low speed just until combined, then stir in the chocolate bits.

Turn the dough out onto the foil-lined pan, and cover with a second piece of foil. Press down on the foil with your palms and fingertips to squish the dough into an even layer. (If you have a second sheet pan, you can place it over the foil and use it to get a really uniform result.) Using two forks or, better yet, a chipper, thoroughly dock the dough at even intervals.

Remove the top layer of foil and place the pan in the freezer while the oven is preheating to 325 F.

Bake until the edges are turning golden and the center looks firm, approximately 30-35 minutes. Cool the pan for 5 minutes, then carefully use the edges of the foil to lift out the shortbread. Using a serrated knife, slice the shortbread into 48 fingers 2 inches long and 1 inch wide. Set the cookies on a rack to cool completely.

The cookies will keep for weeks in an airtight container, although they’re best within a day or two of baking.

Notes:

As with all shortbread, the quality of the butter is key because there is so little to compete with it. Buy the freshest, highest-quality you can.

If you can’t find rice flour, substitute an equal amount of cornstarch, which will give a slightly different but still wonderfully delicate result. You could also just use all-purpose flour, but you’ll end up with a less satiny texture.

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New Year, New Lentil Recipe

I no more hold with New Year’s resolutions than I do with the stupid, pointless holiday itself, but I do find myself wanting to eat slightly healthier this time of year purely out of fat and sugar fatigue.  The impulse will wear off by the next major holiday (either my birthday or Chinese New Year, depending on the year), I assure you.

Until then, this is one of my favorite dinners, just right for these post-holiday, undo-the-damage, back-to-work busy days. Lentils are healthy and frugal, so if you are the sort who makes resolutions about either diet or finances, this fits both bills. If you’re also of a superstitious bent, Italians eat lentils in order to attract prosperity in the new year, and since all the economic signs point to a crappy 2009, it might not hurt to try observing the tradition.

This is a lazy modification of mujaddarah, a lentil, rice and caramelized onion dish found around the Levant. To save time, and also because I utterly adore and completely depend on it, I cook the rice separately in the rice cooker while I make the lentils and onions on the stove, then I mix the two together in roughly equal proportions.  Doing it this way also means that any extra rice is plain and therefore suitable for other uses — say, rice pudding, if your holiday crapulence recovery time is quicker than mine.

This is a wonderfully satisfying main course with or without the optional garnish of hard boiled eggs, and it also makes a great side dish for a simply roasted chicken, fish, or other protein if you’re not a vegetarian.

Cheater’s Mujaddarah
Serves 4 as a main dish, or 6 as a side dish

2 cups basmati rice
3 whole allspice berries
1 cup lentils, preferably green or black
2 garlic cloves, smashed and peeled
1 large bay leaf
3 tablespoons olive oil
2 large onions or 4-6 large shallots, sliced as thinly as possible
1 teaspoon ground allspice
1-2 teaspoons soy sauce
Salt and pepper to taste
Hard boiled eggs for garnish (optional)

Cook the rice with several pinches of salt and the allspice berries in a rice cooker or on the stove, as you prefer.

Combine the lentils with the garlic and bay leaf in a medium pot. Cover with water, bring to a boil.  Reduce heat to a vigorous simmer and cook until tender, 20-30 minutes.  Remove the garlic and bay leaf but do not drain, since the lentil liquid will be used for flavoring and moistening the rice later.

In a large skillet, cook the onions in the olive oil over medium-high heat until completely browned and beginning to crisp at the edges.  Set aside a few tablespoons of onions for garnishing the final dish, and add the ground allspice to the remainder.  Deglaze the pan with 1 to 1 1/2 cups of the lentil cooking liquid, then drain the lentils and add to the pan with 1 teaspoon of soy sauce and several grinds of pepper.

Turn off the heat and stir in half to all of the rice, depending on your prefered proportions.  Add additional soy and/or pepper to taste.

Serve topped with the reserved onions and quartered hard boiled eggs, if desired.

Notes:

Soy is not at all customary in this dish, but it adds depths of flavor salt alone does not, and compensates for the fact that the lentils and rice didn’t cook together.

No matter how many onions I caramelize for this dish, it never seems like too much, so if you’d like to up the quantity, you have my wholehearted blessing.  Red onions or shallots will produce an even sweeter, darker garnish, but plain old yellow onions work fine.

If you want to be exhaustively virtuous, you could use brown rice in place of the basmati.

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$12 Paella Cakes

Paella Cakes with Jersey Corn and Tomato Salad

Longtime readers (Hi, Mom!) may recall The $12 Empanada Incident, in which His Lordship’s finely-tuned sense of food value was grossly violated by a single, tiny empanada of spinach, artichoke and Manchego cheese. Inexplicably priced at $12, this item, which would more properly have been labeled an amuse-bouche, greatly impacted what was otherwise a very enjoyable meal with my family. As I predicted, “$12 empanada” has been our household’s benchmark for restaurant gouging ever since.

By that pricing logic, tonight’s dinner should be valued at least at $12, and if it did show up on Amada’s menu, where I think it would not be at all out of place, I’d wager it’d be closer to $20. This is particularly ironic given that it’s retooled leftovers of a pantry-clearing dish.

For dinner last night, I tried out Mark Bittman’s tomato paella, in my neverending quest for a vegetarian paella that’s actually worth the bother, not to mention my desire to make inroads on a nearly-full box of arborio. I’m not sure this is the Holy Grail, since it still didn’t have all I was looking for despite the use of lovely ripe in-season locally-grown Jersey tomatoes, artichoke hearts and twice the optional amount of saffron, but it was quite nice and used half the box of rice.

It also made a ton, and in an effort to stave off boredom, I thought of frying them up as cakes served over a salad of the remaining tomatoes and fresh corn. The rice being quite sticky on its own, it wouldn’t take much more than an egg or two to hold it together, but we also had a good-sized piece of Manchego, and when is cheese ever a bad idea?

Certainly not this time. The cakes were crisp and savory, yet still lighter than the paella alone thanks to the added freshness of the salad. I love it when the leftovers are better than the original, and I love it more now that I’m completely out of sherry vinegar.

I must render to His Lordship all the credit for the paella cakes, since the idea might have been mine but the flawless execution was all his. While he was mixing and frying these golden, crusty, priceless patties, I was mixing the salad and pureeing half a watermelon for the agua fresca/granita variations I’ll be putting up shortly.

Paella Cakes with Jersey Corn and Tomato Salad
Serves 4-5

3 cups leftover paella
1 1/2 cups shredded Manchego or similar cheese
2 large eggs
Salt and pepper
Olive oil (not extra-virgin) for pan-frying

4 ears of corn, microwaved or steamed until cooked but still crisp
2 medium tomatoes
1/4 cup olive oil
2-3 tablespoons sherry vinegar
2 teaspoons mixed dried herbs (Penzeys Parisien Blend)
Salt and pepper to taste

Mix together thoroughly the paella, cheese and eggs, plus additional salt and pepper as desired. Using two large soup spoons, form spoonfuls of the mixture into ten large oval patties.

Cover the bottom of a skillet or frying pan generously with oil and set over medium heat. When the oil is hot but not smoking, add five (or as many as will fit without crowding) of the patties and fry until dark golden, 3-5 minutes on each side. Remove to a baking sheet lined with paper towels or brown paper bags and sprinkle lightly with salt. Repeat with remaining patties.

Strip kernels from corn cobs and place in a large bowl. Core the tomatoes and cut into large dice, adding to the corn. Toss the corn and tomatoes with the oil, vinegar, herbs, and salt and pepper until well-coated. Taste and correct with more vinegar and seasonings as appropriate.

To serve, build a bed of the salad in a shallow bowl and place two paella cakes on top of each mound of corn and tomatoes.

Notes:

If I’d had fresh herbs, the salad would have been that much better.

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